Artwork text
The sea lies far off,
pale in the color of dry grass.
Above the horizon, a small boat
departs, bathed in the fading light.
The line draws a house, then slips into the empty air;
it follows the grass, then is released into the sea.
It is a line that does not confine form.
Just as it does not hold back the departing boat,
the line, too, does not hold things in place.
Perhaps to draw is not to keep something held,
but quietly to let go
of what will disappear.
Key context
Byun Shi-Ji was a Korean modern and contemporary painter who treated Jeju’s Fūdo not as scenery but as a condition of existence. Through solitude, waiting, wind and the colour of dried grass, his art formed a glocal modernism rooted in Korea and open to the world.